Seven Military Classics

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The Seven Military Classics (武經七書) of China were seven important military texts of ancient China which included Sun-tzu's The Art of War. The texts were canonized under this name during the 11th century AD, and from the Song Dynasty onwards were included in most military encyclopedias.^[1] For imperial officers, either some or all of the works were required reading to merit promotion like the requirement for all bureaucrats to learn and know Confucius' work. There were many anthologies with different notations and analyses by scholars throughout the centuries leading up to the present versions in Western publishing. Qing emperor Kangxi, however, considered them to be "full of nonsense." Members of the Communist Party of China also studied the texts during the Chinese Civil War as well as many European and American military minds.^[1]

[edit] List

According to Ralph D. Sawyer and Mei-chün Sawyer, who created one of the latest translations, the Seven Military Classics include the following texts^[2]:

Jiang Ziya (Taigong)'s Six Secret Teachings
The Methods of the Ssu-ma (Also known as Sima Rangju Art of War)
Sun-tzu's The Art of War
Wu Qi's Wu-tzu
Wei Liao-tzu
Three Strategies of Huang Shih-kung
Questions and Replies between T'ang T'ai-tsung and Li Wei-kung

There are no other known variations of the Seven Military Classics anthology with alternating members but the constituent works themselves have had multiple versions, especially the Art of War, which has had at least a dozen different translations to English in the 20th Century alone.